


Laugh Once a Day (1/1)

by earlgreytea68



Series: Chaosverse [11]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 14:13:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2351300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor gets to know his newest child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laugh Once a Day (1/1)

**Title** \- Laugh Once a Day (1/1)  
 **Author** \- [](http://earlgreytea68.livejournal.com/profile)[**earlgreytea68**](http://earlgreytea68.livejournal.com/)    
 **Rating** \- Teen  
 **Characters** \- Ten, Rose, OC  
 **Spoilers** \- Through the end of S2.  
 **Disclaimer** \- I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)  
 **Summary** \- The Doctor gets to know his newest child.  
 **Author's Notes** \- A missing scene from "[Chaos Theory](http://earlgreytea68.livejournal.com/tag/chaos+theory+in+vortex+orbits+in+relativ)," set after Chapter 26 and before the epilogue. I'm posting this now as the effects of the magic nasal spray are wearing off, and I can't take it again, and I don't know how I'll feel for the rest of the day. Or week, for that matter.

Many thanks to [](http://jlrpuck.livejournal.com/profile)[ **jlrpuck**](http://jlrpuck.livejournal.com/)for the beta, and to Kristin who adores the solemn Fortuna. 

 

 

The Doctor was watching Rose sleep. 

 

Jack had taken Jackie and the kids sightseeing in Cardiff. No, not “the kids”. He had _three_ kids now, he reminded himself, and only Brem and Athena had gone with Jack and their grandmother to see Cardiff. Jackie had never been to Cardiff before. “Why would I come here?” she’d asked, when he’d expressed surprise over that. “There’s a huge rift running through the center of the city,” he’d explained. “Yeah, but I tend to pick vacation spots according to the quality of their beaches, not their ‘rifts,’” she’d rejoined. Brem and Athena, slightly reluctant to leave their mother, had to be coaxed into the outing, but had eventually gone. 

 

And Fortuna, the third child--the unexpected, unknown, newly-beloved third child--was sleeping. Like her mother. 

 

The Doctor had thought, when Rose had decided not to go on the outing, that she had all sorts of deliciously naughty things planned for the two of them. But, when the Doctor had entered their bedroom, he had found her sleeping. He longed to wake her with a kiss, to make love to her. He wanted to love her until it would no longer be possible for him to ever forget what it felt like to be inside her, surrounded by her, what her breaths sounded like in his ear, those nonsense-words she murmured at him, probably thinking they made sense. 

 

But he was also aware that she probably desperately needed to sleep. He suspected she hadn’t slept well for the entire year she’d been away--in much the way he had not slept well without her. The day before, he had slept a week’s worth of sleep in one day. Rose had even confessed that she had once checked to make sure that he was still breathing. 

 

He hadn’t realized the depths of his exhaustion until he had finally gotten her back where she belonged. Which was here, next to him, in his bed. 

 

He ran his finger down the bridge of her nose, and she wrinkled it adorably, stirred a bit and mumbled in half-hearted protest. He smiled and shifted from where he was, propped on his elbow, to lying on his stomach, his nose nearly touching hers. She needed to sleep. An enormous waste of time, but she _needed_ it. So he wouldn’t wake her. They had so much time, he told himself. So much time. He would let her sleep. She’d been up early that morning. She needed the nap. 

 

Despite their delight at having her back, Brem and Athena had eventually tired of watching their mother sleep. The Doctor didn’t think he could ever tire of it, her fluttery little breaths and the way she curved into him sometimes and other times sprawled so much that she frowned when she encountered the barrier of him. But Brem and Athena had gotten fidgety, and he had taken all three of the children—all _three_ of them—into the kitchen and had made pancakes. The TARDIS had welcomed Fortuna with a new highchair, not pink like Athena’s but yellow, a color that seemed to suit the bright, sunny baby. They had all been in giddy, buoyant moods. He had been tossing the pancakes into the air and trying to catch them on the plates, and he had been doing dismally (on purpose, of course). The kids had been giggling at him, all of them. Brem and Athena could sometimes be tough critics, sighing and rolling their eyes at his antics, but Fortuna was a delight because she seemed to think him absolutely hilarious. She had been laughing at him, clapping her hands together. 

 

And then Brem had exclaimed, “Mum! Why are you crying?”

 

The Doctor had lifted his eyes from Fortuna. Rose had indeed been standing in the doorway, despite the earliness of the hour in human terms, and she had indeed been crying. The Doctor had been surprised: Rose almost never cried. Even yesterday, her only tears had been over Brem’s sobbing in her arms. He had wondered if it was a delayed reaction, had walked over to her, determinedly grinning. 

 

“Look,” he’d said. “It’s all okay, right?” Thinking she needed reassurance. 

 

But she hadn’t even been looking at him. Her eyes had been fastened on Fortuna. “She’s _laughing_ ,” she’d said. 

 

And he had said, “What?”

 

“I’ve never heard her laugh before,” she’d said, and then reached instinctively for his chest to burrow her head in while she sobbed. 

 

He, surprised, had lifted his arms up to hug Rose to him, and had said, “Every day, Rose. She will laugh every day. I promise. A whole life filled with laughter, to make up for the months without it.”

 

Now, laying there and watching this gorgeous woman sleeping in his bed, he thought of Fortuna and frowned a bit. He’d vowed to make her laugh, every day, and he wondered what he would need to do to keep that promise. Fortuna was probably too small still for sophisticated humor, like the Muppets. She’d probably like something simpler. Maybe a fake nose with glasses, he thought. He still had a pair in his pocket. Never knew when that might come in handy. Maybe puppets, he thought. Little finger puppets. He rolled onto his back, squirming around in his pocket until he found a tiny puppet of a frog, which fit perfectly on his index finger. He bobbed his index finger, and the frog’s smiley face bobbed at him, and he grinned. Now how could anyone, no matter how difficult to please, resist that? 

 

The baby’s cry suddenly filled the bedroom, courtesy of the TARDIS’s baby monitor system. She was so small still, he thought. Her cry was still so much the cry of an infant. Rose made a noise, stirring, and he leaned forward, murmured against her cheek, “I’ve got her. Sleep.”

 

“Mmm,” she smiled, drowsily. “It’s _so_ nice to have you back.”

 

He kissed her cheek in amused affection before hopping out of bed and down the hallway to Fortuna’s nursery. He wondered if the TARDIS felt strange and unfamiliar to the baby, sending her soothing thoughts. He leaned over her crib, prepared to show her the frog puppet and knock her little socks off with amusement. And, instead, Fortuna saw him and _lit up_. There was no other word for it. She laughed as if he were the most hysterical thing she’d ever seen. 

 

“Huh,” the Doctor commented, out loud. “Well, that took no effort at all. And I had a frog puppet and fake spectacles and everything, that you’re missing out on.”

 

Fortuna laughed even harder, kicking her feet energetically. “Daddy!” she exclaimed, clearly enchanted with her newfound ability to speak, and extended her arms for him. 

 

He leaned down to pick her up and held her away from him for a second, examining her. She clapped her hands together and giggled at him. She was clearly _dying_ of amusement at the moment. This was the child Rose found difficult to make laugh? 

 

“What’s so funny?” he asked, frowning, but she only laughed even harder. He was reminded of walking in on Rose and Sarah Jane, collapsed into hysterics while they made fun of him. “Stop it,” he told Fortuna, petulantly. “Is it my hair? It just looks like this, I can’t help it! And anyway, your mother thinks it’s sexy.”

 

Fortuna suddenly leaned her weight forward, forcing him to pull her against him to keep from dropping her, and she threw her tiny chubby arms around his neck and laughed against him, so full of delight, so _joyful_. 

 

“You’re an enigma, Fortuna Jacqueline,” said the Doctor, bewildered, kissing that blonde hair of hers and walking her over to the rocking chair in the room. “An absolute enigma, little girl.” He sat on the rocking chair, tipped Fortuna away from him so he could look at her. “Your mother says she’s never heard you laugh before. Now why wouldn’t you laugh for Mummy? When she loves you so much and just wants you to happy? Hmm?”

 

The smile faded a bit on Fortuna’s face. “Daddy,” she said again, and he could feel her panic in his head. 

 

And he understood. “Oh,” he said, and he pulled the baby against him, holding her and stroking her back in a soothing gesture. “ _Oh_. You were lonely.” He had known, when he had first sensed her, that she had been a bit of a mess, that the first few months of her life had been chaotic in a world without him. But he hadn’t really grasped it. He hadn’t really thought about it, honestly, so preoccupied with the very idea that he had another child, that the universe was gifting him with not only Rose but yet another miraculous baby. But he knew now what it had felt like for her, because he had lived with that empty, echoing silence for oh-so-many years. This tiny child in his arms, weighing so little, too young to really speak or know what words to put to it even if she could speak, was the only one to know exactly what it had felt like to be the last of the Time Lords. And that experience had nearly driven him mad at an advanced age of many years; he could not imagine being born into a world so cavernous. 

 

“No wonder you never laughed,” he whispered, against the baby-soft down of her blonde hair. 

 

“Daddy,” she said against him, tiny fists clinging to him for dear life, and her terror seeped into him, terror of that horrible _aloneness_ coming back, and he wanted to weep for the idea that his daughter knew what that felt like; he had never wanted his children to ever know what that felt like. 

 

“Yes,” he answered her. “I’m here. Do you feel all of us? We will always be there. You will never be alone again. Never, ever, ever, ever. So says your dad. The Oncoming Storm.”

 

He heard Fortuna take a deep breath, and he stroked at her mind until it stopped trembling in fear and relaxed. And then he slowly eased her away from his shoulder. 

 

“Look,” he said, reaching for the frog puppet and putting it onto his finger.

 

Fortuna stared at it in disbelief. _You have got to be kidding me_ , said her gaze. _You think_ that’s _going to make me laugh?_

 

He bounced his finger about, tapping the grinning frog onto the tip of Fortuna’s nose. 

 

And, okay, she admitted that was funny, and giggled. 

 

“Yeah, see, told you you’d like the frog,” he said. 

 

“You daft man,” said Rose, kissing the back of his neck.

 

He twisted his head to look at her. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

 

“I could hear her laughing,” said Rose, looking over his shoulder at the baby. “I’ll never get tired of that noise.”

 

“Fortuna and I have had a talk,” announced the Doctor. “She’s going to laugh a lot from now on.”

 

“Mummy,” Fortuna said, reaching for her. 

 

“Yes, my love,” said Rose, as she took the baby out of the Doctor’s arms. 

 

And Fortuna looked at her and laughed, tiny nose wrinkling. 

 

Rose laughed back. “What are we laughing at?” she asked. “Daddy’s funny-looking hair?”

 

“Oi,” said the Doctor, combing at it ineffectively. “It’s not…” He looked at Fortuna, and then leaned forward, tipping his head and brushing the top of his hair in a ticklish gesture across Fortuna’s face. 

 

And Fortuna shrieked with laughter.    



End file.
